Veranova, on 29 April 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:
I've been seeing a lot of posts recently from pure Pug players who are resistant to joining a team, and complain about pre-mades?
Why is this?
Let me tell you!
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Do you think that joining a team means you have to compete, run meta, not have fun?
Pretty much, yep! Either that or adhere to strict attendance requirements – that’s the real deal-breaker for a lot of folks. I can and have gone months at a time without playing MWO – can you think of a single group that’ll put up with a player not being around for longer than three consecutive days?
I asked people if they would, once. Notice nobody took me up on it.
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There are groups of players out there for every flavour of play-style.
No, there really aren’t. There really, really,
really aren’t. Name me one group that’d be all “Sure!” when I come back after a month-long GW2 binge and say “You know what? I’ve got an itch to run me some Durgan tonight, who wants to go and do that thing?”
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I don't understand the resistance, when there literally is a team for EVERYONE out there.
. Every single team out there, EVERY FROGGING ONE, requires a time commitment that I am unwilling/unable to make. There is an hours-per-week requirement, or a drops-per-week, or a “be here for Saturday night gametime or you’re out.” I have other stuff to do, I have friends beyond MWO, and I will be
danmed if I let some two-bit goose-stepping power tripper tell me that making my weekly drop schedule is more important.
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This is a game where whoever works together, wins. It's designed to be a team game.
Yep! And I understand and accept that I’m at a disadvantage when I drop solo against what may very well be a premade lance. I read the articles and guides on silent cooperation with PUGlies, and I do my best to be a valuable member of any given drop even without voice coordination or a prebuilt lance.
I’m cool with it. If I’m cool with it, why shouldn’t you be cool with me being cool with it?
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I just don't understand why you would shun all of that, when the central pillars of success in MWO are teamwork.
First of all, because the notion of dropping in a group alongside some of the people I see in the GD section of the forums makes me physically ill. Second of all, because the people I’d
like to drop with – Koniving, Void Angel, Redshift, and others who make the Guides and New Player Help sections of the forums into the excellent and helpful community that GD most emphatically is
not – are already busy dropping with their actual buddies, for which I do not even remotely blame them. Third of all, because the only guild I’ve ever found where I’m welcome to play when, where, and as I like doesn’t play MWO.
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Hell if more people joined teams/groups then there would be no 5-11 man moaning, because every group would have more than 5 players on their roster.
Optimistic much? There’s plenty of reasons why this statement is not nearly as true as you might like, but that’s a discussion for a different thread.
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Anyway, I'm genuinely interested to hear the actual reasoning. Because I haven't seen it at-all.
Just instinctive resistance to joining groups of players.
It’s not instinctive. It’s a highly practiced, well-thought-out, and quite thoroughly tested intense dislike of the gibbering bassholes who populate the forums, long experience with avoiding second-job “Here’s your schedule, here’s your kit, you get one sickday a month, and
we’ll tell
you what you’re doing Saturday night” competitive guilds/units/whatevers, and the knowledge that the ‘Mechs I love to run are ‘Mechs that would get me thrown out of any half-decent unit no matter how good I am with them.
Oh, also I was/am a total junkie for the Invasion and FedComm Civil War-era novels, wherein House Davion were the Good Guys, Katrina Steiner was the Bad Girl, Ulric Kerensky was a hero and Morgan Kell was a motherfrogging sorcerer until Katrina’s venomous, spiteful self had him poisoned on his flagship halfway to Strana Mechty. I grew up with those books. Victor Steiner-Davion, Kai Allard-Liao, and Phelan Kell were my childhood heroes. The very same characters, in the very same books, that all the old TT diehards claim Ruined BattleTech/MechWarrior FOREVER, and which they spit on with every ounce of spite and derision in their bones whilst exclusively flying the CapCon flag in protest (and never mind that Romano is even worse than Katrina is) and burning effigies of one of my favorite authors. So the lore-based units are just
right out, aren’t they?
I play what I want, when I want, and with who I want. These three factors combine to ensure that there is not a single unit in the entirety of the greater MWO community which would take me, so why bother? I’ll just drop solo and take my lumps as I need to. It’s what I’ve done in every other MechWarrior game I’ve ever played.
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